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>8.6. Emergency boot floppies</A
></H1
><P
>It is not always possible to boot a computer from the hard 
disk.
	For example, if you make a mistake in configuring LILO, you might
	make your system unbootable.  For these situations, you need an
	alternative way of booting that will always work (as long as the
	hardware works).  For typical PCs, this means booting from the
	floppy drive.</P
><P
>Most Linux distributions allow one to create an
	<I
CLASS="GLOSSTERM"
>emergency boot floppy</I
> during installation.
	It is a good idea to do this.  However, some such boot disks
	contain only the kernel, and assume you will be using the programs
	on the distribution's installation disks to fix whatever problem
	you have.  Sometimes those programs aren't enough; for example,
	you might have to restore some files from backups made with
	software not on the installation disks.</P
><P
>Thus, it might be necessary to create a custom root floppy
	as well.  The <I
CLASS="CITETITLE"
>Bootdisk HOWTO</I
> by Graham
	Chapman (XXX citation) contains instructions for doing this.
	You must, of course, remember to keep your emergency boot and
	root floppies up to date.</P
><P
>You can't use the floppy drive you use to mount the root
	floppy for anything else.  This can be inconvenient if you only
	have one floppy drive.	However, if you have enough memory, you
	can configure your boot floppy to load the root disk to a ramdisk
	(the boot floppy's kernel needs to be specially configured for
	this).	Once the root floppy has been loaded into the ramdisk,
	the floppy drive is free to mount other disks.	</P
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